1. Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to handheld electronic devices and, more particularly, to a handheld device having a routine structured to perform intelligent elision.
2. Description of the Related Art
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of such handheld electronic devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Many handheld electronic devices also feature wireless communication capability, although many such handheld electronic devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices. Such devices typically include a display and a processor apparatus. The display is typically only a few square inches in size. The processor apparatus includes memory and a processor. The processor apparatus is structured to execute one or more routines stored in the memory. The processor apparatus is coupled to, and in electronic communication with, the display. At least one routine is structured to present a user interface on the display.
The user interface is structured to provide a visual output and visual communications to the user. While the visual output may be in the form of graphics, a considerable amount of data is presented as text. Examples of routines that use textual data include, but are not limited to, an email inbox/outbox, a calendar or datebook, and/or an address book. Such routines typically include an initial, summary screen that presents a number of operators and a summary, or, as described below, more typically a partial summary. The summary may be a subject field or the actual text of the entry or any other shorter version of a more detailed entry, message or file. For example, an email inbox/outbox routine typically presents summary screen with operators such as, but not limited to, a menu bar and buttons such as “new message,” “reply,” “forward,” and so forth. Continuing with the example of an email inbox/outbox routine, the summary screen typically displays an icon, an address field, and a subject field. The icon is an indication of the status of the message, e.g. new, previously opened, sent, and so forth. The address field indicates from whom the message was received or to whom the message was sent. The subject field is a user provided summary and typically relates to the contents of the message. As is known, a user may select, or otherwise open, a message whereupon the summary screen is changed into a message screen that presents the complete message as well as the complete address and subject. Other types of text routines may present different types of data in the summary screen, but the overall operation is similar in that the summary screen presents limited information for many different entries and those entries may be further opened to see additional information.
Many users have become adept at creating short summaries for several reasons including, but not limited to, because they understand there is limited space to present summaries, because they believe electronic communication is informal, or because it is less time consuming to type short summaries; however, many users still create email subject lines, calendar entries, and/or address book entries that are long text strings. For example, it is not too unusual for a user sending a short email message to type the entire message in the subject line and forego typing any text in the body of the email. Also, entries created by a routine, for example, a message announcing a change in a scheduled meeting that is created by a scheduling/calendar routine, and which is not physically typed by a user, may have a considerable length. Further, there are users who just prefer to type longer and/or formal summaries.
As noted above, the display is typically only a few square inches and usually has a width of about two to five inches. Given this size of screen, which is partially occupied by the operators, the available space to present the summary is limited. One option is to allow each summary to be presented in full over several lines. This may limit the number of messages, or entries, presented at one time in the summary screen. Most users, however, prefer to see the summaries of multiple messages/entries at one time. Thus, the typical text routine is structured to truncate the amount of text presented in each field thereby creating partial summaries. For example, in an email routine, the partial summaries present a limited numbers of characters in the address field and in the subject field and, as stated above, are more accurately described as partial summaries.
The problem with truncating a summary is that the more important or relevant text may be cut from the presented summary. For example, if a user had typed an entire message in the subject field which read “The morning meeting has been moved to room 42” and that summary is truncated at twenty-five characters, the resulting subject field would be presented as, “The morning meeting has b . . . .” Thus a user would have to completely open the message to see the complete subject field.
Similar numerals refer to similar parts throughout the specification.